Other Energy Topics Articles, Stories & News

Both prices of multi-crystalline and mono-crystalline solar panels fall this week. As China is heading into the slow season, the prices of solar panels in China have observed a noticeable decline. Meanwhile, with more and more trade-friendly capacities available outside China, major Chinese module makers, such as Jinko, are able to enter the U.S. market with more competitive price, and using strategic pricing to gain more market share in the U.S., the highest solar panel price over the world. With the obvious price competition, solar panel price in the US has shown the obvious drop recently. In Europe, as more Chinese module makers exit the MIP agreement, and leveraging the capacities available in the third countries, solar panel price in Europe is also pressured.

GlassPoint Solar, the leading supplier of solar to the oil and gas industry, today announced the appointment of energy veteran Sanjeev Kumar as senior vice president of project development in North America. Kumar will lead the growth and financing initiatives for GlassPoint and its California projects. GlassPoint has developed a novel solar thermal technology for oilfields, which produce steam at a lower cost than steam made from natural gas.

Solar industry veteran Andrew Nichols has joined APsystems as Senior Vice President of Sales, USA.
Andrew comes to APsystems with over 30 years in high technology and alternative energy sales. He most recently served as Vice President of Worldwide Sales for SolarBridge Technologies through its successful acquisition by SunPower Corporation.

International electrical manufacturing exhibition CWIEME Berlin is once more offering students from around the world a chance to present their work to a live audience of industry professionals and win a 1,000 Euro prize in the 2016 CWIEME Challenge.

By Tereza Pultarova for E&T: German researchers have developed a new carbon-based active material that can be manufactured from apple leftovers and used to build better energy storage systems.
The apple-based material can be used as the negative electrode in sodium-ion batteries, which are currently being researched as a more environmentally friendly and cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
Instead of energy-intensive lithium mining, which frequently damages the environment, battery manufacturers in future could be using organic waste to make batteries.
In tests, the new material discovered by researchers from the Helmholtz Institute Ulm of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has demonstrated ‘excellent electrochemical properties’, allowing the researchers to carry out 1000 charge and discharge cycles during which the apple-based battery demonstrated high stability as well as capacity. Cont'd...

In yet another record-breaking year, the solar industry in the United States installed 7,286 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2015. GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) announced the historic figures today ahead of the March 9 release of the U.S. Solar Market Insight report.